Twitter War Campaign, a First

The term social media has historically referred to online social interactions between friends, posting photos of family and sharing them. People advanced to using social media to sharing information, news stories, opinions and comments.

Today, social media has taken on a new role in politics and war. Nations like Egypt and Tunisia use social media to help each other liberate their countries from dictators. People in oppressed regions learn from nations who have used social media to solve problems.

Last week however, social media took on a new role when Twitter was used by Israel to declare war on Hamas. An article on the use of Twitter by Israel to declare war said that this Tweet was used, “terror sites and operatives in the #Gaza strip, chief among them #Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets.”

The article (http://bit.ly/QHaXF6 ) discusses how Israel used a Twitter campaign to manage communications about their intent toward Hamas. Compared to other Twitter campaigns that announce new phones or games, we can see that social media campaigns can also be used for war and terrorist activities. As the article states, welcome to 2012.